Graham Dolphin

Graham Dolphin born 1972 in Stafford, UK, lives and works in Newcastle, UK.

Graham Dolphin remakes the public shrines and tributes made by fans as memorials to dead rock stars. The objects and sites chosen as the site of veneration are often arbitrary – a rock near the place Gram Parson's body was burned, the back door to Freddie Mercury's garden flat. The symbolism of the objects the fans choose though is ripe for an artists interpretation. Gram Parson's rock in the desert recalls paintings of Saint Jerome's penitence. Mercury's door becomes a portal to the afterlife. Fans make pilgrimages to these sites seeking the stars aura in physical remnants left behind by, or strongly associated with them. As with saintly relics, or fragments of the true cross, they are an attempt to make tangible the intangible. Saints relics – jaw bones, fingers, handkerchiefs – are displayed in churches as objects of veneration and devotion, where worshippers leave notes of thanks and prayers to the saints. The fans shrines are direct descendants of these relics. Dolphin's interest is not in making replicas or facsimiles. The fans shrines are living artifacts, constantly changing and being added to. Dolphin makes a version of them, he wants the sculptural object to become itself, not a copy.

Dolphin works with many different media, both drawings, painting and sculptures. He makes drawings depicting the imagined last view of iconic musicians. He makes gates and doors but denies them their function leaving them fluctuating between sculptures and paintings. Video is also incorporated as to create a place of dialogue between different artists. The composer Sun Ra (1914-93) and the composer Moondog (1916-99) are placed back to back in Dolphin’s piece ‘Sun Moon Sun’. Playing on the fictional names and biographies of these two avantgarde musicians, the film shows the waxing and waning of the sun and moon, from day to night, light to dark. The visual collage of the musicians is mirrored in the audio remixing and layering of the composers’ works, the apparent chaos of sound and image settles into a drone and trance feeling, present at the heart of both musicians’ works.